“You’re all set, then, Dr. Naisho?” said Professor Beckmann through the holofield.
“Yep,” I replied. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
I shook my seat to make sure it was sufficiently stable. I was sitting on a plain old kitchen stool. It was extremely light, had no backrest, and wasn’t even bolted to the ground. One good scootch with my hips was enough to make it slide across the floor. I looked over at Coeus, who was standing beside me, watching with eager eyes as he waited for the go signal. I wasn’t even going to bother asking permission to go sit in the chair with all the crossbars at this point. If this was how I was going to die, then so be it.
“All right then, just one last review before we go,” said the professor. “Your first target destination for today is on the northern coastline of the Nemuro Strait, a distance of 55.10 kilometers, or about 253 steps from your current position. Estimated arrival time is 10:35. Once you’ve reached the stopover point near the Kunashiri National Highway, we’ll run our initial underwater systems test.”
“Got it,” I said.
“All clear on my end too,” said Lei in the background. “We can get started whenever you guys are ready.”
Professor Beckmann turned and nodded, then gave the order:
“Coeus, proceed.”
For a moment, there was silence. Then came a low, droning sound—like the rumble of distant thunder, or a minor earthquake. One of the many windows on my holofield displayed a video feed captured by a drone from a good distance away. I could see the giant lifting one leg high in the air. We were already in motion.
It slowly brought its leg back down to the ground, trampling a thick blanket of greenery beneath its massive foot. Though it looked like flat grassland from the footage, it was in fact a mountainous forest full of tall trees and undisturbed wildlife habitats—all now flattened underfoot. Leaves and branches and even entire trees were kicked up like water droplets around its ankle as it touched the ground. It was as if the Titan was so incredibly massive that the reverberations from its weight and force lent actual liquid properties to the sea of trees.
It lifted its other leg, and took its second step. Even the mountainous region around Lake Mashu was hardly a speed bump to a being of Coeus’s size, and it crossed over the range with ease, a huge cloud of sediment puffing outward when he set his foot down on the opposite side. I couldn’t believe I was actually a part of the events playing out on my holofield and not simply watching a movie from the comfort of my own home—though the complete and utter lack of any tremors in this kilometer-high living room had much to do with that impression.
I closed my eyes and focused my senses, trying to feel the ground beneath me for any hint of shaking, But I felt nothing—there were no tremors whatsoever, not even on the order of a magnitude 1.0 microquake. The room was perfectly still. On the holofield, I watched the Titan continue its laborious walk, and imagined myself sitting (as I was) somewhere inside its head, which was bobbing up and down and even jerking back and forth horizontally. Could it really be possible to cancel out all of that momentum with shock absorbers and gyroscopic stabilizing devices? Without even the slightest hint of reverberation?
See? I told you it would be fine, said Coeus, a very proud look on his face. I let out an exhausted sigh of relief and let the tension finally drain from my body. Once again, I had made the mistake of doubting a Titan’s capabilities. It was folly to ever attempt to measure Coeus in terms of things that were “impossible” by human standards. I would have to completely discard all common sense in order to truly have faith in him. Thankfully, I suspected I could do without common sense for the next couple months, because there was no one else around to demand I adhere to it—just me and him. Alone together, and together alone.
It was December 29th, 2205.
Our journey had officially begun.
2
Far off across the sea, a white-capped mountain that looked a bit like Mount Fuji came into view. It was Kunashir Island, on the opposite side of the Nemuro Strait. I snapped a photo of it from the exterior balcony. It was a funny feeling, staring through the viewfinder at what looked like a drone image—while holding the power to capture it with a twitch of my finger like any other photo. I then turned to look down at the roadway directly beneath us, zooming in as far as I could with my telephoto lens. Traffic control phalanges had formed a blockade, cordoning off the roadway to prevent anyone from getting too close to Coeus. Just on the other side of the line, though, stood a cluster of cars and a crowd of onlookers who’d come to see us off. The world was already well aware of our little adventure.
As soon as the plan for Coeus and Phoebe’s meeting was solidified, the rest of the AIs came to an agreement to release virtually all of the restricted information related to it. Not just the reason for the Second Intelligence Base’s malfunction, but the fact that its Titan needed to connect with the Titan from the Twelfth Intelligence Base to resolve the issue, and that one of the two was going to have to make a transpacific journey in order to make that happen. I was a little uneasy when I first heard they were planning to disclose all of this. I couldn’t help but worry that society did not have the collective mental capacity to take an outlandish story like that at face value. But reality was stranger than fiction, I suppose, because there was surprisingly little hubbub about the whole affair, overall.
Granted, my surprise was due in large part to my own misinterpretation of what disclosing said information would entail. It wasn’t as though the network simply released all of that classified information at once—it drip-fed the facts to the world in small doses, after calculating in advance how the average person would react to any given piece of information and giving them time to grow accustomed to it before revealing more. It was less a deluge of information and more of an aqueduct through which the AI could share the news with the world in a way that allowed the Titans to control the flow. The reports that Titan crafted to break the news were almost immediately accepted by the general populace without a hint of negativity, nor even much surprise.
It was only after the fact that I realized Titan had been doing the same thing my entire life—controlling the flow of sensitive information in such a way that it didn’t make waves or stir controversy, but could just percolate its way through society. So that we could continue living out our happy little lives in peace, without ever having to look at anything too unpleasant or shocking—and even in the rare cases that necessitated facing some hard truths, we were certainly never shown without sufficient warning.
Not to imply that everyone was quick to accept these types of things. I was sure there was a non-negligible number of people out there who were still terrified of this giant “monster” we ourselves had created, and were out protesting in an attempt to make the UNDP do something about it. There were plenty of independent media outlets and niche communities for sharing opposing viewpoints and taking part in such demonstrations. The network did not suppress people’s freedom of expression, nor infringe upon their human rights—even if it did of course like to control the narrative to minimize conflict. In that sense, Titan did tend to pull the wool over our eyes.
While opposing viewpoints were never silenced, they did get glossed over to the point of making it feel, to the average citizen, as though dissent did not exist. That was a major factor in why I believed that the world had accepted all of this information regarding Titan’s newfound autonomy and mental dysfunction without missing a beat. The trick to controlling the narrative was that if you encouraged people to believe that everyone was fine with the story you told them for long enough, most people would learn to accept it. Eventually, they’d shrug their shoulders and hop on the bandwagon—because according to Titan, that’s what everyone else had already done months ago. And God forbid they be behind the times.